Sound Horeg: When a Community Builds a Market Negotiate With Public

According to Metro TV News, sound horeg refers to a high-powered, self-assembled sound system used at informal events such as wedding receptions, parades, convoys, night markets, and community gatherings. Its main characteristic is extremely heavy bass paired with a wide range of music, from koplo and dangdut to EDM (2025).

Its history is relatively short. Good News From Indonesia notes that the word horeg comes from Old Javanese, meaning "to shake" or "move," while Metro TV News records the meaning as "to move or vibrate," according to the Ministry of Education and Culture's Javanese-Indonesian dictionary (2025). The sound horeg phenomenon first surfaced in Malang around 2014 through street parades, before spreading into various forms of community events.

At first, the sound system functioned as a piece of equipment supporting an event. Over time, that equipment became part of the show itself.

People don't come just because there's a wedding reception or a parade happening. They come to see the sound system, feel the bass vibrate, watch the lighting, compare rigs against one another, and check out the modifications.

That experience gave the sound system its own standalone entertainment value.

Its value is also no longer determined by technical specifications alone. The community itself decides which system is considered good, who has a strong reputation, which modifications are considered impressive, and which provider is worth hiring.

This is where a market starts forming from within the community. Preference creates demand. Demand pushes people to build and supply the product. The product then gets compared, given a reputation, and generates willingness to pay.

The community doesn't just consume the product. It also helps decide what the product should be.

The scale involved shows that sound horeg has outgrown the status of a mere hobby.

According to Medcom.id, the community Sound Malang Bersatu was founded in 2017 with 11 members and grew to around 1,200 members by 2024, made up of both enthusiasts and rental-service providers. Renting a single unit can run into the tens of millions of rupiah, depending on the provider's reputation (2024).

Those figures show both network growth and the formation of genuine willingness to pay. People don't just need a sound system. They're willing to pay for a specific experience.

Under these conditions, reputation matters.

A better-known provider can occupy a different position from other providers. People choose not merely based on equipment availability, but also on perceived quality, past experience, and the owner's reputation.

This mechanism isn't actually so different from any other market. When reputation becomes a signal of quality, reputation can become a differentiator. When that difference is seen as valuable, consumers can become willing to pay more.

What makes sound horeg interesting is that this mechanism grew from within the community itself.

No large industry set the standard for what counted as cool beforehand. The community formed its own standards. Providers' names and sound systems circulated through experience, conversation, content, and word of mouth.

The market formed from the bottom up. And as the market formed, economic activity emerged around it.

Sound horeg doesn't only generate transactions between a sound provider and a customer.

An event needs a lot more than that: crew, operators, transportation, equipment maintenance and modification, documentation, catering, decoration, and various other supporting needs.

There isn't yet enough aggregate data to say how large the total turnover of the sound horeg industry is, how many jobs depend on it, or how big its multiplier effect is on the local economy.

But the economic pattern is visible.

When a community creates demand, local players have an incentive to supply it. As activity grows busier, the need for supporting goods and services grows along with it.

That means the money spent on an event doesn't always stop with the sound-system owner. It can flow on to technicians, crew, transport providers, food vendors, documentation services, and other local businesses around the event.

This is where sound horeg becomes more than an entertainment phenomenon. Cultural demand can grow into economic demand.

For some people, sound horeg isn't just self-expression or a hobby. It's also a source of income. The equipment they buy is an asset. Modification creates added value. Reputation opens up opportunities to land bookings. And the community becomes a meeting point between people who own the equipment and people who need the service.

An ecosystem like this points to a form of economy that often escapes the radar of the formal industry: an economy that grows out of community preference.

But the bigger that economy gets, the more space it needs to operate. This is the point where the sound horeg issue starts involving people outside the community.

Market growth has gone hand in hand with the formation of an identity.

A phenomenological study of adolescents in Lumajang Regency found that sound horeg functions as a symbolic means of self-expression. The sound horeg community also plays a role in shaping collective identity through solidarity, cultural symbols, and social boundaries. The study concluded that this practice can be understood as a cultural practice rather than simply a category of disturbance (Auliana et al., 2025).

Another study used Pierre Bourdieu's framework to read the production and consumption of sound horeg in the city of Malang as an arena of local cultural production involving power relations, the distribution of capital, and the negotiation of legitimacy. That study also noted its socioeconomic contribution alongside the tensions that arise from differing habits and public perceptions of public-space use (Margaretha, 2026).

These findings show that sound horeg doesn't only generate transactions. It also generates meaning for the people involved in it.

For community members, sound horeg can be a symbol of creativity, self-expression, solidarity, entertainment, and even social standing. That value may not be easy to see from outside the community.

But a strong identity within a community doesn't automatically translate into acceptance outside it.

A different view comes from Didid Haryadi, a sociology lecturer at Universitas Brawijaya Malang. He argues sound horeg is more accurately described as fleeting entertainment born from shrinking public access to welcoming public spaces — city parks, children's playgrounds, and venues for popular entertainment. He rejects framing it as culture, arguing culture requires something learned, held in common, and continuously practiced in daily life (Al Faruq, 2025).

That is one expert's opinion, not an empirical finding representing the whole phenomenon. But this difference in perspective still illustrates something important: the same practice can carry high cultural value for a community while receiving a different level of social acceptance outside it.

Both can be true at the same time — and as a community grows, that gap becomes harder to ignore.

Sound horeg doesn't take place in a space fully owned by the community.

Sound that feels like energy and entertainment to participants can mean a loss of peace and quiet for nearby residents. Equipment that the community sees as a symbol of creativity can be perceived as a disturbance by people who aren't involved.

The issue then stops being simply a matter of taste.

According to RRI Sumenep, sound horeg's noise level can reach 120 to 135 decibels — far beyond the 55-decibel daytime noise threshold set for residential areas under Decree of the State Minister for the Environment No. KEP-48/MENLH/11/1996.

The WHO's Guidelines for Community Noise state that prolonged exposure to sound above 85 decibels can cause permanent hearing damage and is associated with stress, sleep disturbance, and high blood pressure (WHO, 1999).

Public pushback has also been documented in research. A reception study of Instagram user comments on three posts by the account @malangraya_info throughout 2024 found oppositional reading to be the most prominent stance. The most-engaged comments questioned sound horeg's legitimacy as culture and highlighted its impact on residents' health (Sufa & Pradhipta, 2025).

That study analyzed only nine selected comments, so its findings cannot be used to represent the overall proportion of public opinion. Even so, the findings are enough to show real friction between the community and part of the public outside it.

On one side, there's identity, entertainment, solidarity, and economic activity. On the other, there's peace and quiet, health, and the right to public space.

Because of that, the issue isn't as simple as deciding who's right and who's wrong. A single activity can generate value for one group while creating an externality for another.

For the community, loud sound is part of the experience. For nearby residents, that same sound can be a social cost.

The question, then, is how the value a community creates can be sustained without all of its social cost falling on people outside that community.

Growth also changes who has a stake in the outcome.

As long as the activity stays within the community's own circle, informal rules may be enough to manage it. But once the activity occupies public space and affects non-members, the decision no longer rests entirely with the community.

Residents get involved. Government gets involved. Regulators get involved.

A legal framework for regulating activity in public space already exists. Hukumonline explains that open-air events such as weddings, carnivals, and street parades require a public-gathering permit from the police, and that holding one without a permit can trigger applicable legal sanctions. A normative legal study at Universitas Pembangunan Nasional "Veteran" Jawa Timur likewise frames the use of sound horeg that ignores noise thresholds and local authority permits as a matter of public order (Nugraha, 2025; Gilbranza, 2025).

Enforcement has already happened. Malang City Police banned sound horeg activity within its jurisdiction in July 2025 after receiving public complaints about disruption to the elderly, children, schoolwork, worship, and rest time (Sari, 2025).

Still, this phenomenon doesn't have to be reduced to a choice between banning it outright and leaving it unmanaged.

Teguh Tri Wahyudi, a lecturer at the Faculty of Letters at Universitas Negeri Malang, sees sound horeg as a meeting point between local traditions — such as village-cleansing rituals and carnivals — and increasingly sophisticated audio technology. He argues this practice should become an opportunity to build a healthier, safer system of governance for popular entertainment, rather than simply being treated as an enemy (RRI Malang, 2026).

Composer Embie C Noer also raises a technical-cultural point in this debate by distinguishing between loud and clear: high amplification doesn't automatically produce better vocal articulation (Rohman, 2025).

This perspective opens up another possibility: governance.

Location can be regulated. Time can be limited. Noise levels can be measured. Permits can be clarified. Complaint mechanisms can be built. Organizers can be given clearer responsibility toward nearby residents.

An approach like this doesn't have to mean eliminating space for the community. Clear rules can actually help ensure that the economic and entertainment activity that has already grown doesn't keep running into the same conflict over and over.

As an ecosystem gets bigger, the ability to manage its impact becomes part of the ability to survive.

For brands, sound horeg has an interesting set of characteristics.

Its community has an identity. Its activity carries cultural relevance. Its audience formed organically. Engagement doesn't happen only digitally, but also through offline experience. And, just as important, its economic activity was already running before any brand showed up.

That means a brand isn't entering an empty space.

A brand is stepping into an ecosystem that already has its own history, reputation, informal hierarchy, values, and boundaries of authenticity.

Because of that, a community shouldn't simply be treated as a collection of audience members. The questions worth answering also include: how is this community perceived by people outside it, who is affected by its activities, are there regulatory issues worth paying attention to, and — once a brand steps in — whose reputation comes along with it?

This matters because community relevance isn't always the same thing as public legitimacy.

A community can be highly relevant to a particular target audience while still carrying social friction outside that community.

That doesn't mean the community isn't worth approaching. In fact, a community with high cultural energy often has the potential to create a closeness that's hard to build through ordinary advertising.

But the stronger a community's cultural relevance, the more important it becomes for a brand to understand the context surrounding it.

The decision to get involved shouldn't only weigh what can be gained from the community, but also the associations that come along once a brand becomes part of that ecosystem.

In the end, a brand isn't just buying access to an audience. A brand is also stepping into the community's story.

Sound horeg shows that a community can do far more than simply gather people who share an interest.

A community can create demand, and that demand gives rise to supply. Supply then generates transactions. Reputation differentiates the players involved, while economic activity opens up opportunities for other local businesses around it.

Through that process, a community can grow into a local economic ecosystem.

That's the side of the story that often gets lost when sound horeg is discussed only as a noise problem.

But the other side matters too. The bigger a community gets, the bigger its activity gets. The bigger the activity, the bigger its footprint on public space. And the bigger that footprint, the more people have a stake in how that community grows.

Because of that, community growth ultimately isn't only about scale. It's also about maturity.

For sound horeg practitioners, maturity can mean the ability to protect space for expression while also managing its impact on the surrounding community.

For government, the challenge is creating rules that let local economic and cultural activity keep thriving without disregarding the public interest.

For brands, the challenge is seeing the community as an ecosystem, not merely an audience.

And for any community that's growing, there's a broader lesson here.

When a community is still small, it can decide for itself what counts as valuable. Once it becomes large, more and more people get a say in whether its existence is acceptable.

Growth makes a community bigger. Economic value makes it more important. But legitimacy determines whether it has room to keep growing.

Sound horeg, in the end, isn't just a story about how loud a sound system can get. It's a story about how a community can build a market from the ground up, drive economic activity around itself, construct its own identity, and then has to learn to negotiate with an increasingly wider world.

Perhaps that's where the biggest challenge of community-led growth really lies: not simply how to make a community grow, but how to make sure that growth still has a place within the wider society around it.

References

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